Acorn computers

Acorn was a computer manufacturer in the United Kingdom from 1978 - 1998, based in Cambridge, home to many UK computer companies at that time. From 1981 to 1994 the company had an extremely lucrative relationship with the BBC, producing the BBC Micro and Master range of computers, whilst the BBC ran a series of educational programmes on British television about computing.[1] These machines were almost ubiquitous in UK schools and some public sector institutions and utilities, including British Rail, one of the largest users of IT systems in Britain in the 1980s. Eventually, however, the dominance of the Windows/X86 PC platform, and its lower cost, led to collapse of Acorn, and the dramatic decline of the computing platform it developed. By 1998, Acorn "collectively generated revenues of 11.5m and operating losses of £(10.0)m, compared with revenues of £25.2m and operating losses of £(3.7)m in 1997."[2]

↑Acorn Group PLC(English). US Packet (1998). Retrieved on 14 May 2015. “In 1998 they collectively generated revenues of 11.5m and operating losses of £(10.0)m, compared with revenues of £25.2m and operating losses of £(3.7)m in 1997.”